July 11th, 2013 issue #1228

By Carolyn O'Neal
My cousins are beautiful. Dark eyes, shiny black hair, and cheeks as full as the sunset. When I look at their photographs, I pretend I’m looking in a mirror. I pretend I have a face that people want to see and a body that will fit into white dresses with pink ribbons and matching shoes. I run my fingers across the images of my beautiful cousins and I don’t feel like I’m living at the bottom of a well where every sound echoes off barren walls, cuts my skin, and hurts my ears.

A young girl suffers consequences from life near the tar sands in Alberta, Cananda, the point of origin for the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline. A young man finds a way to help his dying brother reach for the stars. These poignant tales are the Hook's second- and third-place short story contest winners, as chosen by contest judge and best-selling author John Grisham.